


Vagabond

by shuunin



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: :(, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 18:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12259419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuunin/pseuds/shuunin
Summary: Oikawa was a lot like the breath in his lungs.Sometimes he'd have it, and sometimes it'd leave him.





	Vagabond

**Author's Note:**

> kms

There's a beauty in blinking, Iwaizumi thinks. And it resides in the way Oikawa’s presence seems to shift with every flutter of his eyelids. A beat, and he's there, smile warm like winter afternoons. Another beat, and he's gone, leaving a cold bedside in his wake. Iwaizumi begrudgingly holds on to the tiny moments in between, where their fingers are intertwined under the sheets and Oikawa is under him, glowing a glittering  concoction of gold and silver through the dark, his eyes crinkle with his smile. 

“Whatcha thinking about, Iwa-chan?” 

Tooru’s voice is real, grounding him to reality. Iwaizumi can't think about the first time he started to expect Oikawa to leave again. His fingers are numb. “Not you, shittykawa.” He was never a good liar.

Oikawa sticks his tongue out, “So mean! Even though all you can think about is me, right?”

“In your dreams.” 

Oikawa hums and grabs his hand, Iwaizumi let's the latter's fingers slide into the interstices between his own. the numb feeling in his fingers flickers, like tiny ants crawling beneath his skin. Oikawa is warm, and his confidence radiates like a sun in midnight. “No, Iwa-chan, in  _ your _ dreams.”

Iwaizumi grunts, his agreement silenced by his stubbornness. 

They're sitting on the balcony of Iwaizumi’s flat. The glass sliding door behind their table is open, the porcelain curtains are ghosts dancing across the white blue light reflected on the wooden floor. It's cold, and Oikawa is wearing the dark gray sweater he'd left behind as a memento back when they were roommates in college, Iwaizumi didn't have the heart to throw it away, and perhaps Oikawa knew, perhaps that's why he wore it. He used to love the way it clung to Oikawa’s shoulders, his collar bone peeking out at him from the loose, fuzzy gray cloth. But now he wishes Oikawa would move on to something else, something less painful. Now he sees that same collarbone, those same shoulders, and the once gentle flutter of affection he felt stir quietly in his stomach turned into a stormy sea of doubt, necessity, infatuation.

They hold hands for a while, bickering about their lives together since childhood. The memories of hot summer days spent together in the fields. The one time Oikawa dared Iwaizumi to eat a butterfly they caught, the same day he'd earned the nickname “Assikawa”. The summers spent burning their toes in the golden sand of the playground lot, tossing around a red and green volleyball that held all their dreams and aspirations until the sun went down. 

They talk about the things that have changed, like Oikawa’s sudden playful nature surrounding their relationship, scampering away from Iwaizumi for weeks on end whenever their emotions got too close. It was a sudden gap that exploded between them, like the strongest earthquake had hit them and created a permanent fault that separated them, an earthquake Oikawa had willfully provoked. 

There are things that haven't changed, like when they sleep together Iwaizumi still wakes up in the middle of the night because it’s _too_ _hot_ and he realizes it's because Oikawa is pressed into him, legs and arms tangled around him and his head tucked under his chin the way it used to be when they were kids. It's the kind of heat Iwaizumi clings to, the kind that infiltrates his dreams and at the same time doesn't let him sleep, the kind that makes memories drift like calm waters over his consciousness, the kind that keeps their love alive. 

Oikawa still likes the smell of coffee in the morning, even though he doesn't drink it too often. Most times Iwaizumi would find store bought coffee gone cold in its recyclable paper holder, and he'd just reheat it in the microwave and add sugar, Oikawa never needed to hear a thank you. Iwaizumi still calls him Assikawa.

It's one of those nights where they both don't feel like “making love”, as Oikawa liked to call it. Iwaizumi doesn't know why he chooses such intimate wording, there was nothing that could be described as intimate in their situation. They eat melon bread, watch the city as it turns in its sleep, and talk about their future plans.

Oikawa found a job, he says. He’s researching muscular degenerative diseases alongside doctors whose names are too long for Iwaizumi to remember. He thinks about their time together in college, when sometimes Oikawa would sleep in his lab coat as if it would follow him into his dreams and convince him that he loved the track of medicine, that he would be able to abandon the jerseys in his closet and the volleyball under his bed. Iwaizumi would do the same, but he enjoyed being philosophical, filling the pictures in his camera with metaphors. 

Iwaizumi was a photographer, an artist and an author. A lot of his ideas came from the way Oikawa danced in and out of his life, like a never ending waltz. 

With the sex being out of the way tonight, there is nothing that can be used to cloud their judgement. Iwaizumi feels his heart swell with the confidence to confront Oikawa.

“Why don't you want to move in with me?” Iwaizumi asks finally, when the atmosphere turns rigid and their conversations have fizzled out, “What are we doing?”

Oikawa looks unguarded and vulnerable for a moment, but then he smiles. “I'm a free spirit Iwa-chan, I like having my own space.”

“Why do you only come late at night?” 

“I come whenever I miss you.”

Iwaizumi feels the honesty in the words, but doesn't like the laughter behind them, the way they roll off Oikawa’s tongue like a careless thought, like feelings didn't matter.

Iwaizumi takes a second, engraves the fire of Oikawa’s touch into his heart and pulls away from him. “I don't think I want to do this with you anymore.”

Oikawa looks at him, eyebrows scrunched in  _ genuine  _ confusion. “Do what?”

“This. I don't want you to come here like you're trying to hide from something.”

“Iwa-” Oikawa leans towards him across his chair, but Iwaizumi pulls back with all his might, keeps himself from breathing the ocean on Oikawa’s skin.

“No. You're not going to kiss me this time and say we're okay. This isn't how it's supposed to work, Tooru.” 

“I don't understand, Hajime, you were always okay with this..”

“ _ You  _ were always okay with this. I was  _ never  _ okay with it. I wasn't okay with it then, and I'm not okay with it now.”

What frustrates Iwaizumi the most is that no matter what he does, Oikawa won't open up to him. The feelings are bubbling inside his chocolate orbs, but they're suppressed, drowned by the laughter of Oikawa’s facade. Or maybe he really is that emotionally insensitive, Iwaizumi is trying to think of the last time he was able to read Oikawa like a book. 

When did it all change?

“You're not making any sense Iwa-chan.” Oikawa says softly, but the playfulness still hums within his words.

Iwaizumi turns to face him despite the chairs they sat on being next to each other. He looks straight into his eyes, gathers up all the courage he can find between memories of their childhood, their high school, and their college life together. It had felt like maybe being with Oikawa was never going to change, like he'd always wake up to the same brunette tufts of hair poking his nostrils, like he’d always hear the jumbling of keys as Oikawa fumbled to unlock the room.  _ (The dorm, the room, the apartment.) _

“I'm telling you to choose.” 

Oikawa’s eyes widen the tiniest fraction, Iwaizumi wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't carved the image of his round eyes into his memory. His mouth opens, closes, then opens again.

“Let's just sleep tonight, Hajime.”

When Iwaizumi wakes up the next morning, he wakes up alone. The only evidence of Oikawa ever being there is the dent in the bed sheets where he was curled underneath the covers. Iwaizumi wills himself out of bed and walks to the mirror on his dresser. One of the drawers is open, rummaged through, the messy distribution of his undergarments was evidence that Oikawa had been meddling inside it. The space in Iwaizumi’s drawer, where the gray sweater had always been neatly folded is empty. 

On top of his dresser, there's a series of polaroids spread across the dusty surface. There's a picture of Oikawa with him in each one, dating back to grade school. 

_ “You and I will always be together, right, Iwa-chan?”  A small chubby hand reaches out, grasps the side of Iwaizumi’s red shorts. _

_ There's a volleyball tucked between his arm and hip on one side, and the other uncurls Oikawa’s fingers from his shorts and instead holds on to them.  _

_ “As if you'd have it any other way, assikawa.”  _


End file.
